Land of the Free
by The Never Minder
Summary: In 1996, a boy received a Charmander from Professor Oak in Pallet Town and took the Kanto region by storm. But now it's 2010, and a very different boy halfway across the globe has just seen his first pokémon, under the worst circumstances imaginable...
1. December 2010: Damian

**Warning: strong language, violence, violence toward children, and racial themes. There may be mild sexual themes in later chapters.**

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Damian liked it when he and his father took things out of the cars near stores.

Or rather, he liked it more than taking things out of cars in parking garages, or in neighborhoods. The garages were dark and frightening, like caves, with looming walls above and no lights anywhere. The neighborhoods felt too exposed and open, and also gave him a sick longing for living back in his house, like they had when his mother had still been alive.

(Damian didn't remember her dying, as his father had said. He strained his mind sometimes and could only recall that his mother had tucked him into bed one night as always and then had suddenly been gone.)

Things had changed a lot since his mother had died. Damian remembered, a little less each day, how he had once lived in house instead of a shelter, and had gone to school, and had slept at night instead of during the day. Now, he spent his nights with his father, looking for cars that had things in them.

He didn't realize, exactly, that they were stealing.

Damian knew stealing was wrong. Stealing was when you took something from another person, something that didn't belong to you. He didn't realize that it was the same thing, when he and his father rummaged through parked cars and took the valuable things out. That had always been accompanied by an uneasy feeling of danger and guilt, but he didn't exactly know that it was _wrong_, or at least wouldn't have been able to explain why.

(_It's okay_, his father had said once, sometime early on when they had only just started. _This is fine; this is fine_. And Damian had believed him, of course, but the sinking feeling in his stomach wouldn't fade when he saw his father looking furtively around to make sure they were alone before opening the car door.)

—

Damian fidgeted while his father rummaged through the back seat of an unfamiliar black car. It was late, and cold, and he was bored. So far, it hadn't been an enjoyable night, or an unusual one, but the boy was pleased that the two of them were in a parking lot instead of a parking garage or a neighborhood. He made a game of counting the street lamps visible from where he stood: one, two. Neither of them gave off any light. He wondered whose job was it to fix them.

His father handed him something as he emerged from the car, and Damian took it, then looked at it. It was small and very light, a beige plastic box with a handle, rounded corners, and a lock on one side. It felt empty. Damian immediately tried to open it and found that he couldn't.

"There's money in that," Damian's father said confidently, smiling. The man locked his hands behind him and stretched with a wide yawn. "Check underneath the seats, okay? Daddy's getting too old for this."

It had been meant as a joke, but Damian nodded solemnly and climbed into the car on his hands and knees, still holding the closed box by its handle. Once inside, he placed the box on the seat and began to run his hands over the floor of the car, searching for anything his father might have missed. He didn't feel anything other than the texture of the carpet, not even crumbs or bits of plastic like most other cars had.

There was a distant shout from the middle of the parking lot, but Damian, distracted, wasn't paying enough attention to hear it. If it had registered more quickly, he might have panicked, but he was too caught up by the novelty of the black car and its strange tidiness to be alert. Damian's father, however, recognized the sound instantly for the threat it was, the threat of getting caught.

He swore, and that _did_ catch Damian's attention. Heart hammering, the boy turned and began to crawl back toward the car door to get out, but something in his father's expression stopped him. Their eyes met, for a split second, and as Damian watched his father shook his head once—and only once.

And then there was another man outside, walking toward them in long strides.

The mere presence of another person made Damian's anxiety and worry turn into real fear, but he didn't make a sound. The car door was still open, so the boy could see everything, including the ugly expression on the stranger's face once he got closer. The man was white, and dressed in black clothing, both of which made Damian nervous.

"You get the _fuck_ away from the car!" the stranger shouted, pointing at Damian's father, who flinched, throwing his hands up in a gesture of surrender and backing away as directed. However, despite the previous command, the stranger immediately ran forward and seized Damian's father to keep him from moving further away. Damian's insides clenched in fear, but he still didn't dare move.

"I'm sorry, sir, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," his father babbled, speaking quickly, but the man didn't let him go, simply pulling one arm back and backhanding him across the face.

"Don't give me that crap, kid," the man hissed, and it took Damian several terrifying seconds to realize the stranger wasn't talking to _him_. In fact, the stranger hadn't even seen Damian yet, it seemed. Damian didn't understand that this was more than luck, that it wouldn't be easy to see a dark-skinned boy in a black car with tinted windows in an area with no lighting.

The man continued to speak, practically spitting in his rage. "Who sent you? How the fuck did you find out?"

The questions made no sense to Damian, although he was so afraid that he could barely comprehend the words at all. However, Damian's father didn't seem to understand, either, pleading, "No one, I'm not working for nobody! Please, I'm so sorry, I didn't take anything, _please let me go!_"

"Liar! Little fucking punk, you think you're going to lie to me? I'll send them your head in a box! _You don't fuck with Team Rocket!_"

There was a shout in the distance, and then another one, cries of warning. Like before, Damian didn't register them, his eyes frozen on the man holding his father. As he watched, the stranger reached into the pocket of his black pants, pulling out—something. A ball. It was split into two colors, red and white.

Before Damian could wonder what it could possibly be for, the man suddenly shoved Damian's father away from him, out of the boy's line of vision and away from the car. Then he threw the ball to the ground, with a laugh that made Damian want to cry; although he didn't, remaining still and concentrating hard on breathing quietly.

The ball didn't bounce. There was a sound almost like an echo, and a faint smell of smoke, but all that was completely driven from Damian's mind less than a second later when he saw another figure appear outside the car.

A beast, a _monster_, had suddenly materialized before him on the pavement, a terrifying horned silhouette barely visible in the darkness. With a roar the creature charged, and Damian heard his father scream, and then a horrible crunching sound. There were several more cries of agony and then Damian heard something squelching.

The stranger stood still for the moment, breathing heavily. At some point he had to have picked up the ball again, because he was holding it in one hand. He tossed it toward the point outside the car where the sounds were coming from. The inhuman growling suddenly halted, and now there were only the strained sobs and groans of a dying man. Damian felt numb. Something in him had shut off: all he could do was breathe, and he was barely managing that. So he didn't immediately register the pounding footsteps and raised voices now echoing outside the car.

"No-no-_no-nononono-noooo_—!" a woman was saying, trying to keep her voice down and failing. "Mikey, what did you _do_?"

The man sounded bitter when he replied. "You know you're not supposed to call me that."

"_Mikey_—"

"Who was he?" came another female voice, flat and far more controlled. She had a noticeable accent; Damian didn't recognize it as Japanese.

"Little shit wouldn't tell me. I thought someone must've sent him, but now I don't know anymore, he might have just been carjacking…"

Damian tried to focus on the words, or on his own breathing, or on anything but the oppressive silence that had now replaced his father's gasps for air. Their words slipped through his mind almost as soon as he heard them, but he listened anyway.

"You didn't find out_._" There was no change in the Japanese woman's tone, but her words were followed by a quick sigh of irritation.

"Look, it'll be fine. It'll be fine, right?" the man asked, the faintest beginnings of real panic beginning to creep into his voice. "There was no one around. No one will give a shit about another murder in _this_ part of the city."

"Mikey, you _killed_ someone," said the first woman, voice trembling.

"She's right," said the second woman. "That's not how we do things, Gimbal. Especially not with a pokémon. We cannot afford to have this traced back to us, do you understand? How many weapons leave wounds like that?"

There was a pause. Damian, still curled on the floor of the black car and focusing almost every ounce of his concentration on trying not to cry, didn't care. The conversation meant little to him anyway. Damian had never heard of pokémon, let alone seen one. For a child his age this was unusual, but not unheard of.

"God. Fuck. I just got so…_mad_," the man finally said, sounding defeated and nervous.

"You're not a very good liar," spoke another voice, a man, also with an accent, one somewhat more pronounced than the woman's. "You left it in the glove box, didn't you? After you swore up and down you had it locked it in the undercompartment before we left."

"Look, the guy didn't _get_ it, alright? Will that make you happy?" the first man said, stepping toward the open car door and into Damian's line of vision. "Your precious parcel is still in the—_oh, shit! _Oh my _God_!"

Damian screamed, terrified, hands still clenched around the plastic box as he threw himself as far as he could to the other side of the car. He'd been seen.


	2. December 2010: Shock

Suddenly all the adults were shouting at once, and, panicked, Damian couldn't understand any of the words. He covered his head with his arms, but then a body loomed in front of him and he was being dragged out of the car onto the pavement.

"Just what the hell is going on here?" hissed the dark-haired man holding onto Damian's arm, the man with the Japanese accent. The _other_ man, the one who had killed Damian's father, had jumped back away from the car and was staring at the two of them with a frozen expression. Likewise, the two women had suddenly gone silent.

Damian shuddered, trying to pull away, but the grip on his arm didn't lessen. He would have screamed, except at that moment he turned and saw his father's body lying on the ground.

It was face-up. Damian couldn't tear his eyes away from his father's stomach, where something had left a gaping mess of a wound. Blood had poured out, staining his father's clothes, and his left leg had been broken and was facing the wrong direction from the knee down.

He didn't want to see any more. Damian tried to run—the grip on his arm tightened and he was pulled back. He tried moving, thrashing, but arms suddenly closed around him, leaving him no freedom to move except with ineffectual jerking limbs. Damian tried to scream again, but now there was a hand clamped firmly over his mouth. His feet weren't even on the ground anymore, kicking pointlessly in all directions in the air.

Helpless, Damian screwed his eyes closed, shaking with sobs. It felt like a hollow cave in his chest, empty and numb. Everything suddenly felt far away: the murderer, the man holding him, the body, the black car, the locked box now being pried out of his right hand…

Somehow, around him, the world didn't collapse.

—

Pella was surprised when the kid in his Fin's arms suddenly went still. The boy had been squirming so hard he'd nearly kicked Fin in the knees, but now he looked like a little dark-skinned ragdoll, hanging lifeless in his captor's arms. The effect was unsettling.

Considering that Pella's heart was _still_ racing from the shock of finding a child, of all things, waiting in their car, it was a miracle that Fin had found the presence of mind to restrain the kid before he could start shouting. Pella's blood turned to ice when she realized just what might have happened if they'd been discovered here, with a body on the ground, and the four of them standing here holding a child, pokémon on each of their belts…

"Gimbal."

Pella snapped out of her daze, turning to the speaker, Gin. The woman was staring at Mi—at _Gimbal_, with a hard expression in her narrow black eyes. It was hard to see in the dark lot, but Pella could just barely discern that Gin's hands were shaking, holding the scientist's parcel so tightly that her knuckles were white.

Pella didn't blame her. If they'd gone back without it…

"_Gimbal_," Gin repeated, louder this time. "Gimbal, damn you, hurry up and check the car. Make sure it's really empty this time." Aside from her accent being somewhat more detectable than it usually was, the woman didn't look too anxious on the surface, although Pella knew that this probably had more to do with Gin's self-control than her feelings on the situation.

Because this was bad. _Really_ bad.

Gimbal started, finally tearing his gaze away from Fin's motionless captive, and practically tripped over his own feet in his haste to obey. All his bravado seemed to have abandoned him.

Pella wrung her hands as the man searched the vehicle, checking underneath the seats and even going so far as to open to trunk. She kept shooting glances to Gin, but the woman had her eyes fixed on the car. Desperate, Pella looked at Fin—he was still focused on the kid, seemingly at a loss for what to do.

Finally, Gimbal closed the trunk, walking back toward them and shaking his head. Gin nodded, though she didn't look completely satisfied.

Pella couldn't keep silent any longer. "Well?" she asked, her voice sounding shamefully terrified even in her own ears. "What do we do now?"

Gin didn't look at her, her expression closed and contemplative. "There's nothing for it. We have to take them both back with us."

"Take—take them with us?" asked Gimbal, his voice hoarse and disbelieving. "You're not serious!"

Gin _did_ turn then, staring Gimbal dead in the eye, her expression suddenly so furious that he visibly crumpled under her gaze.

"And what would you have us do?" she asked, voice even but with a definite edge. "Would you like us to hide the bodies somewhere and pretend this never happened? It _happened_, Gimbal, and we're not going to risk police action just to save you from Boss Proton. You earned this."

He looked at the ground, shamefaced. Gin turned to Pella, holding out one hand expectantly. "Give me that key," Gin said, her voice calmer but no less focused. "First things first, we have to finish what we came out here for."

Pella scrambled to obey, reaching into her own shirt and yanking out a thin loop of string before tugging it over her head. The key dangled loosely on the cord, catching what little light there was and gleaming as it spun slowly back and forth.

Gin took it, turning the key over in her right hand as she balanced the parcel flat on her left. They all held their breath, nervously, unconsciously, as she stuck the key into the lock—and then successfully turned it. It had worked. They let out a collective sigh of relief. It had _worked_. They hadn't come out here for nothing.

Gingerly, Gin turned the key back to its original position and removed it from the lock, handing it to Pella. Pella's hands nearly shook with relief as she placed the string back around her neck.

"You're not going to open it?" she asked, smoothing over the fabric of her shirt once the key was in place underneath it.

Gin shook her head. "No. We can't risk damaging it further. Even oxygen might be enough to ruin it at this point."

Pella nodded, disappointed, but at that moment Fin spoke: "Uh, Engine—he's cold. The kid's getting really cold…"

Gin swore, walking quickly over to him and reaching out an arm to feel the boy's forehead with the back of her hand. "I should have known," she muttered. "He's going into shock…"

Alarmed, Pella traded glances with Gimbal, who looked just as taken aback as she did. "What does that mean?" she asked, nervously wringing her hands again.

"It's a response to trauma. Basically, his body can't deal with the stress, and he's shutting down," Gin said, sounding distracted, rummaging through her jacket to look for something. "And no _wonder_; he just saw his own father getting murdered in front of him. I should have guessed…"

"His father?" asked Gimbal, as though the thought hadn't occurred to him before. Pella had other concerns.

"What do we do?" she asked, alarmed. Was the kid going to die? Should they call an ambulance? Well, they obviously couldn't do that, but, if the kid was going to _die_…

"There's not much we can do," Gin said through gritted teeth, apparently unable to find what she'd been looking for. "One of you, find something edible and give it to me. We need to make sure his blood sugar level is stable."

Gimbal shook his head, looking lost, but Pella dug through her pockets and came up with a half-eaten protein bar, which she handed over silently. Gin snatched it and shoved it at Fin, saying sharply, "Make him finish this. I don't care if you have to shove it down his throat."

She then turned to Pella and Gimbal, rolling up her sleeves. "We're out of time. We have to move the body," Gin said, walking toward the still-bleeding corpse on the pavement.

Pella and Gimbal followed, stopping about a foot away from the fallen man. Pella swallowed, struggling to overcome the wave of nausea that rolled through her stomach when she saw the wounds Fin's Nidorino had left.

"Come on, you two," Gin said, her voice determinedly calm. "Help me lift this. Propellant, go open the trunk."

Pella did as she was told. Behind her, Gin and Gimbal struggled to lift the body, getting blood all over their clothes, and the pavement, as they moved.

"Fin, hand her the kid and come help us," barked Gin after a moment, voice strained from the exertion. "Propellant—get the kid in the car. Give him your jacket if you have to, just make sure he's warm. We'll hand him over to the medics when we get back, if we can."

Pella swallowed nervously and nodded, taking the kid from Fin as he approached with a bit of difficulty—the boy was heavier than he looked. Maneuvering him through the open car door to rest on the seat, Pella took off her jacket and managed to get the boy's arms through the sleeves with some effort: he was completely unresponsive to her movements. She noticed absently that he smelled terrible, as if he hadn't bathed in days, and his skin was clammy with sweat. When she finished putting the jacket on him, the kid sat motionlessly, not responding at all when she waved a hand in front of his face. Unnerved, Pella left him sitting where he was and went to check on the others.

They'd gotten their victim into the trunk, where he lay face-up, blood staining the interior. Pella turned away, unable to look, and shuddered when she saw that her companions' hands were covered in blood.

"Is this really necessary?" asked Gimbal, wiping his hands on his black pants, not looking at any of them. "No one's going to give a shit about this guy. For all they know he's just another dumbass who got himself killed in the ghetto. And the kid probably won't say anything if we let him go. Who would believe him?"

"There's no choice," said Gin, and Pella was surprised to hear resignation in her tone instead of anger. "Honestly? I would be willing to bet anything that this was just a carjacking gone wrong, but we _have_ to interrogate the child and make sure. We've made enough careless mistakes for one night."

Hesitantly, Pella reached out and placed a hand on Gimbal's shoulder. He looked up to meet her eyes, expression miserable, and she realized that he'd spoken out of guilt. Maybe this had gotten personal for him. Terrible as it was, the thought made her feel relieved.

But she didn't have long to dwell on it. "You're sure he's dead?" Fin asked, sounding repulsed as he glanced over the body in front of them. His voice was uneven and shaky, not quite able to maintain his composure, accent far more pronounced than normal. "You know, it takes a while to completely bleed out, even if it luh, l-looks like he's losing a lot of blood really fast. Those wounds aren't big."

"It wasn't the wounds that killed him," Gin said grimly, slamming the trunk closed loudly enough to make them jump. "Now get in the car, all of you."


End file.
